How to get NBI account

How to get NBI account

I know that normally the NBI is reserved for business accounts with tax ID's. But I also know there are a lot of regular accounts under the NBI market that are not under a business name with regular social security numbers and even have FAN discounts attached. I have 1 number I want to port in from Virginia, but can't do that because I'm in the WTX market. I was told by care that once a number is an NBI number, it's always supposed to be under NBI. So if I get a transfer of responsibility from an NBI account, then my account can be converted over to NBI.

Are these two methods really the only way to get an NBI account? I just want to do what a Verizon or Sprint customer can easily do, which is, to have different numbers (from different regions) under the same family talk plan.

Re: How to get NBI account

Own a business. There are lots of consequences with having an NBI account that you don't want. And once on NBI you will never be able to transfer your service to a non-NBI account or go phone, and your bill might become higher because of different charges and possibly taxes. People don't think about those things, but I have to deal with extremely upset customers all the time because they wanted to be on the NBI account, reps break policies and move them to NBI accounts and then there all kinds of different problems because of that. NBI is only for businesses with tax ids, consumer accounts have no business being in the NBI market!

Re: How to get NBI account

I thought the taxes were based on the primary place of use. And having an NBI account is better than having 2 or 3 different accounts because the regions don't match. I used to have 5 lines, but two users went to verizon because they moved to Florida and chose verizon in case they ever needed to change their numbers again, as Verizon even asks you what state or zip code you want when changing your number.

Re: How to get NBI account

Perhaps, since you feel so strongly about this you can provide some further clarification on the consequenses of having an NBI account. As I understand it the primary differences are that you are no longer subject to the ATT Regional restrictions placed on family plans (Pro) and that you are now stuck on an NBI for the life of the number (a potential negative for some people, but not necasarily). As far as I'm aware, an NBI account has accese to all of the same plan options as a regular consumer account. How exactly are the taxes calculated differently and what other negative consequenses do you forsee?

Re: How to get NBI account

You have already listed the negatives. A number in an NBI market must stay in an NBI market. That's how people get an NBI market account as well. Like if i try to get a number from my company transferred to my name, they would give me an NBI accout to do the tobr. The taxes on a consumer account that is under the NBI market has taxes based on the ppu address, so it wouldn't really change. I never saw any tax difference between a consumer account in WTX market vs consumer account in NBI market for example.

In my eyes, I don't really see any negatives to be honest. I saw many accounts from New Mexico that came from Alltel that were all in NBI market even though they all had numbers from same market. How fair is that lol. ATT just has a very strict policy with the NBI market.

NBI account

I've spent hours on phone with AT&T customer service in the past month.

The issue is that if you are on a single plan, as an indivual user on an account, the price is so high that it's not competetive at all with the mobile share plans. I've spoke with 4 diffent Customer Service Reps that told me 4 different things about swithcing to NBI.

All of them told me that a tax id or ein number was not necessary. One told me that none of us could ever get out from under the NBI and a Supervisor said that was not so. The problem is that AT&T, unlike other carriers will not let you get on a share plan unless you are in the same market, unless you switch to NBI, which gives you basically the same plans, in fact switching to NBI is a little cheaper because the charge per laptop was $10 instead of $20 per month. (I think, I could be wrong because I heard so many different stories.) One CS rep told me that AT&T would have mobile share avialable, for numbers from different markets, sometime this quarter (1st qtr 2013) and the others told me that it was not so. This is certainly a problem for smart phone users that would like to decrease their bills by $30 to $40 a month.

I don't think that Drumn_bass's reply

"Well Verizon's billing system is different. Bottom line is NBI market is intended for business accounts only and should be used for business accounts only."

is an answer at all. I would think that AT&T would FIX their system like Verizon and Sprint do their billing instead of telling me that if I make the change I'll be sorry.

All I want is to be able to utilize the mobile share plan in lieu of what I've got now and it seems as if the single plan for an individual user, is penalized. If my Iphone 5 wasn't brand new, I would bail and go back to Verizon.

Isn't there a better answer than "well, verizon's billing system is different"?

Re: NBI account

1962telecaster wrote:

I've spent hours on phone with AT&T customer service in the past month.

The issue is that if you are on a single plan, as an indivual user on an account, the price is so high that it's not competetive at all with the mobile share plans. I've spoke with 4 diffent Customer Service Reps that told me 4 different things about swithcing to NBI.

All of them told me that a tax id or ein number was not necessary. One told me that none of us could ever get out from under the NBI and a Supervisor said that was not so. The problem is that AT&T, unlike other carriers will not let you get on a share plan unless you are in the same market, unless you switch to NBI, which gives you basically the same plans, in fact switching to NBI is a little cheaper because the charge per laptop was $10 instead of $20 per month. (I think, I could be wrong because I heard so many different stories.) One CS rep told me that AT&T would have mobile share avialable, for numbers from different markets, sometime this quarter (1st qtr 2013) and the others told me that it was not so. This is certainly a problem for smart phone users that would like to decrease their bills by $30 to $40 a month.

I don't think that Drumn_bass's reply

"Well Verizon's billing system is different. Bottom line is NBI market is intended for business accounts only and should be used for business accounts only."

is an answer at all. I would think that AT&T would FIX their system like Verizon and Sprint do their billing instead of telling me that if I make the change I'll be sorry.

All I want is to be able to utilize the mobile share plan in lieu of what I've got now and it seems as if the single plan for an individual user, is penalized. If my Iphone 5 wasn't brand new, I would bail and go back to Verizon.

Isn't there a better answer than "well, verizon's billing system is different"?

No, because that's the correct answer. Different companies have different policies in place. It's up to a customer to decide which company best fits their needs. If a company feels it can increase business, they might change systems or policies. They might decide the costs of making the change are too high and leave things the way they are.

*The views and opinions expressed on this forum are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider, or party.

Re: NBI account

I agree with you that any business can do whatever they want to do, as far as providing customers service.

And if AT&T does not choose to expand and do share plans throughout different markets, your comment,

"It's the right thing to do" is correct.

And, just because the competition allows a service or a program, does not mean that a business owner has to. They can do anything that is lawful. If a customer is not happy with one's service, they can take their business somewhere else.

The frustration I've experienced is that I get different answers from different AT&T CS reps.

My personal view, and it's just my own opinion, is that AT&T has smart enough people, so, it's not a software or billing issue.

It's a decision that has been made, probably because there is not enough demand and it would require additional revenue to put this in motion.

If more of their people were in my situation, AT&T could easily accomodate customers with this need.

The last time I called into customer service, I was able to get to a supervisor and was told that a customer can switch to a NBI and back again and that the sticky NBI regulations can be waived.

Do you think this is true or were the other customer service reps correct?

Re: How to get NBI account

As of October 29th, 2013, it is no longer necessary to get an NBI account in order to combine numbers from different AT&T regions onto a single personal plan. I just did it on my personal Mobile Share plan, and wrote about my experience {Inappropriate content removed}

Re: How to get NBI account

snnyc wrote:

As of October 29th, 2013, it is no longer necessary to get an NBI account in order to combine numbers from different AT&T regions onto a single personal plan. I just did it on my personal Mobile Share plan, and wrote about my experience {Inappropriate content removed}

It works if the prefixes that you have are in the same market, but according to the knowledge base if you are in different markets they will not combine them on a retail account

Re: How to get NBI account

I believe this changed at the end of October. You can now have an NCI account which will allow different markets to be combined under one plan. You can also keep your FAN discount. The "C" stands for consumer.

Re: How to get NBI account

gbreynol wrote:

I believe this changed at the end of October. You can now have an NCI account which will allow different markets to be combined under one plan. You can also keep your FAN discount. The "C" stands for consumer.

Re: How to get NBI account

You can have cross market numbers on the same retail or NBI plan. Also, NBI accounts have the same plans as consumers, they are just referred to as 'Business Talk' or Business Mobile Share. Either way it's irrelevant, the system has changed and consumers should not have business accounts. Also, even if it is cheaper to 'add a laptop' to a mobile share plan in a business market VS a consumer market is irrelevant too. Business owners are privy to different discounts on different things because THEY OWN A BUSINESS.

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Re: How to get NBI account

I spoke with chat support and supposedly, we can now get numbers from different markets. He offered to change my number but I was just asking for info. I get an error any time I pretend to change my number on my online account when I put a zip from outside my market.